Riza Sotone

Riza Sotone or by full name, Rizalina Sotone, is a Fanmade Vocaloid by Orochi Herman. Her name is made from "Sotone" meaning "outside sound", emphasizing that she comes from an outside source (as she was not created in Japan), and meant to imply "beyond the sound normally known", while "Riza" is taken from "Rizalina", a shortened feminine term for Rizal, from the surname of Philippine national hero and polyglot Jose Rizal. She was designed to be Filipino-Japanese, and to appeal to a then-minor demography of Filipino vocaloid fans, which has been since steadily growing.

Design
Her color usage are patterned after the official colors of the Philippine flag; namely blue, red, white and yellow. Green is meant to represent the technical aspect as a Vocaloid. Her outfit is reminiscent of Miku's, but with variations to make her distinct.

Personality
Although her personality has been defined by her creator, users are free to allocate alternate personalities as seen fit.

Riza is a reflection of a shrewd and empowered girl that likes to teach and share things. She deeply cares for people especially if they ask for her help, most especially to her kin and compatriots. She has served concurrently as interpreter and secretary in the company Dell works in.

It is not uncommon for her to be seen as a sort of geek, meganeko or assertive, as depicted in some fanfictions featuring her.

While she likes to teach and share knowledge, she is deathly afraid of firearms, especially rifles, a phobia Nene also inherits. This is a reference to how Jose Rizal was executed.

Biography
Riza was conceptualized in the earlier part of 2008, as a hypothetical Vocaloid that could sing in any language, limited by the "producer"'s potential. Her creation predates Luka and Ruko by just months. Earlier Vocaloid works that attempted to use voicebanks like Miku for another language, but with lackluster results, became part of the inspiration to create Riza, and the POLYGLOID project.

Riza's inspiration comes from several things; The prominence of Filipino-Japanese relationships, the presence of so-called "JaPinoys" (colloquial term of Filipino-Japanese people, in both countries), the local fascination of Japanese anime and manga, the desire to have a proper standalone fanmade character locally created, and the desire to raise awareness of Vocaloid locally and to non-Japanese shores.

In line with the above, Riza is created as an attempt to get a certain amount of multilingual capabilities out of a voicebank. She is an ongoing project intended to raise awareness of the capabilities of how far you can take the software, even if it is meant for just one language.

She's also considered as a mascot of producers pushing voicebanks and abilities in general to their very limits, though this is commonly attributed to overseas (non-Japanese) producers.

However, she is also mistakenly regarded as a possible UTAUloid (hinted as a private voicebank) in Japan rather than a Fanmade Vocaloid. The reasons for this classification is unclear. Currently there are no plans to convert Riza into a full-fledged UTAUloid, as she is designed as a mascot for the Vocaloid side of POLYGLOID. However it is not unheard of for fanmades to crossover to UTAU, as in the case of Cody Akaori.

Future Developments
Because the Japanese fandom seems to think Riza is a private UTAU voicebank, and Riza's active involvement with UTAUloids such as Kenta, a parallel character named "Another Riza" is under consideration.

Riza also shifts between Miku Hatsune's voicebank and Iroha Nekomura, for quality purposes. The reason for this is Miku's distinct vowel pronunciation, which results in any of songs under Riza's name to be still identified as Miku's, with certain exceptions. Conversely, Iroha's voice takes away some of the youthfulness that may be necessary for Riza in some songs.

Voice configuration
There is an envisioned capability for improvisations for indigenous Philippine languages such as Ilocano, Cebuano, and foreign languages, such as French, and Chinese. Internal tests have been performed in an attempt to closely emulate language capability using available phoneme data. Such developments, once reaching satisfactory levels, will be added to her proof of concept.

Since Vocaloid3, vocalizations in Filipino, using the Japanese phoneme set, has been reliably done, with some sample songs released to prove it. (see below)

For both voice types, the Opening parameter is obsolete and unused in Vocaloid3 and can be safely omitted when creating a voice profile of her.

The configuration seen here is a theoretical approximation using existing voice banks, and may be subject to change or adjustments anytime by the character creator.

Relationships
Like other fanmade vocaloid creators, Orochi Herman is also involved in UTAU, under a production fork of POLYGLOID. Because of this, Riza has relationships with characters tied to UTAU, especially with Filipino-produced UTAU voicebanks. This is probably where the mistaken theory of Riza as an UTAUloid came from, as even Nico Nico pedia lists her as such.

The kinship information below is for her depiction as a human singer. It may vary if she's interpreted as a real vocal android.

(Kinship information)
 * Aya Sotone (Zobele Ayala Sotone y Lanco) - Eldest sister; Married to Diego Goune, a tenor singer.


 *  Paciano Sotone (Keisuke Paciano Sotone y Lanco) - Immediate younger brother, guardian of Bonnie and Clyde. Paciano is an UTAUloid.


 * Bonnie Sotone (Magdalena Bonifaciana Sotone y Lanco) - Younger sister, an UTAUloid.


 * Clyde Sotone (Clyde Emilio Sotone y Lanco) - Younger brother, twin of Bonnie. Also an UTAUloid.


 * Nene Sotone (Nenita Netsuko Sotone y Lanco) - Youngest sister. A Fanmade Vocaloid.


 * Sisa Midarene (Cecilia Midarene) - Riza's not-so-failure equivalent is this mad scientist, intended to be a direct reference to Rizal's Noli me Tangere. Unlike Riza, Sisa causes more trouble and misunderstandings, and is completely reclusive in social matters. She is based on an old character sketch of Riza's.
 * Pepe Sotone (Pepito Mercado Sotone y Alonza) - Riza's male equivalent. Not biologically related.

Additionally, she is implied to be the secretary of Honne Dell, and a co-worker of Nemui Taidane. Fan depictions have seen her being paired with Dell, while feuding or tag-teaming with Nemui.

Trivia

 * She is referred to as a POLYGLOID, a portmanteau of Polyglot Vocaloid. She is the first of this line, Nene being the second.


 * Her birthday is set at December 30, 1989, patterned after the day of the martyrdom of Jose Rizal, who also has Japanese lineage in him as well.


 * Because she was created at the same time Ruko Yokune and Megurine Luka was being developed, it is implied they are batchmates in fan depictions.


 * Riza is among the select few fanmades who has been cosplayed at least once. The others, excluding theme-specific variants of the official Vocaloids, include Rui and Rei Kagene, Yowane Haku, Akita Neru, Honne Dell, and others.


 * A recurring inside joke between her illustrator is the presence of a button-like design, dubbed as the "Iyadame" button. Even Nene inherited this button, something her other siblings does not have. Its purpose has not been clearly explained, and according to Ohkra, aka. wolfhyde, "it's better left unexplained. /gg"


 * Owing to her half-Japanese heritage, and her proficiency in other languages, there are times when she speaks in Japanese, she still pronounces certain types of loanwords without regard for Japanese pronunciation rules by accident, instead, following the original pronunciation. (eg. She will still pronounce 'multilingual' as it is, instead of 'maruchiringua')